Followers of the Darkness
by Dark.Silver.Flower
Summary: In a steam Punk post-Victorian world, Heartgrove is a town where hearts are planted, but seldom harvested. For Amelia Williams, a girl with big dreams and bigger secrets, no matter how many times she tries to escape, she keeps getting dragged back...
1. Prelude

[_Hey, guys. This story is based off of the song "My Body" by Young The Giant. It takes place in a fictional steam punk post-Victorian town. I hope you enjoy! ^^]_

Prelude

Perhaps it was more of a dream, than anything, but the girl couldn't help but leave herself among the ashes. The sky a sullen grey, the earth a flavorless brown. The tranquility was of a sort that bragged of nothing but emptiness, for that was all it could ever offer. The icy mists of frozen dawn had long past faded and left the girl in the arms of the bare earth, alone.

So perhaps she should wait until the sky fades form its empty grey, but that would be too simple. Too easy. Life wasn't meant to be easy. And, hell, the girl knew that.  
>The girl took her rise from the ground and found a way through the valley. The breeze was ever soft, for in itself it lacked the effort to be anything other than melancholy. That breeze whispered to her; it told her its secrets. And yet she knew that it was the only being, other than herself, who knew how it was to live among those ashes. The pallor face of a new day, of new hopes, of new life, never showed itself to the girl. Not that she ever expected as much.<p>

The Victorian Queen Anne stood at the corner of Meadow and Terrance drives. This was the part of town away from the tenements and high strung buildings that marked the inner city. Heartgrove, they called it. It was the place where hearts are buried, but seldom harvested. It was a town of steam, where those hearts met, lived, and parted. Where hopes were left, and yet, rarely revisited, left as specters of the past.

The house itself had no name, for no one ever thought much of it. It was the sort of building that, if seen while traveling, made one's heart ache for a more cultured time that was in itself marvelous and horridly hypocritical. However, it was haunting, different than the others of its time. The deep greys of the elaborate architecture were quite different than the rainbow shades that often accompanied the passed era.

The girl walked to the wrought iron gate that seemed to moan open at her simple presence. She walked across the sulry lawn where not a single flower dared to grow. The house was desolate, but it was home. A stone angel stood by the walkway, but it glared at the presence of anyone who walked past it and seem to jeer and mock at their simplicity.  
>The stairs to the second story creaked as she climbed to the empty hall of deep red oak. There was a corridor. A room, second on the left. A chest. A package of letters. And maybe memories.<p>

Dear reader, I now find a need to tell your more about the history of our mysterious protagonist. She is Amelia Williams of 1 Meadow Drive, a eloquent home that has been in her family for generations. She is 17 years old. And those letters... those letters hold more truth than the girl would be willing to admit. They contained her hopes, her past, _her dreams._  
>She lied on her bed and stared at the cracked ceiling. The grey crepe of her black laced dress pulled away from her upper legs and clung to the bed around her. Almost-shoulder-length copper hair settled like a nest around her face, the sort of face that could tell more stories than any other of its time. Her blue eyes then closed, like pearls in a white velvet case.<br>I would like to acknowledge that she then entered the captive state of a girl who knew of nothing else but to dream. She was the sort of individual who had never seen the outsides of the city limits, until the beginning of that very year. She lay there and thought of her adventure, of what she had escaped from, and what she still had left to face. And most of all she thought of _him. _  
>Let us go back to seven years ago, when the girl was only ten year old...<br>The smoke billowed from the train as Amelia and her mother stood upon the platform, Amelia in a deep orange dress that shined in the warming light. It was the first time she had seen her father since the war began. The doors slid open and people began leaving the trains to meet the loved ones that awaited them. It was a lovely autumn day in mid October and the gentle breeze that blew through Heartgrove made her mother's hair drift among the serenity of it al. Ebony strands took upon a sense of their own animation and waved in the inviting afternoon air.  
>A boy and his father were the first to part from the train. The man had the look of a professor, with quiet eyes that hid behind spectacles and well groomed, yellow hair. The boy was perhaps twelve, and looked like his father except for his shaggy red hair; he even had glasses, which were round, like most children's glasses. As they parted the train with their suite cases, they were immediately followed by a tall man with copper hair that matched Amelia's.<br>"DADDY!" screamed Amelia as she ran and hugged her father's waste.  
>"Amelia! You look so well!" He knelt down to her level and embraced his daughter. Her chin rested on his left shoulder and she could not left but look across the platform and stare at the boy and man who have left the train prior to her father. The man was having a friendly conversation with an older gentlemen not twenty feet away.<br>Her father stood and walked to her mother and kissed her on the cheek. She was not one for much public display of affection.  
>"Arthur, I hope you have been well. Things have not been the same since you left..." She was near the point of tears. Her voice quavered; her strong posture suddenly became quite weak, as if a great effort had finally been relinquished from her, both physically and emotionally. Amelia's father brushed away her mother's tears as the woman collapsed into his embrace. But Amelia could not keep her stare from the boy.<br>As her mother regained her composure, both parents noticed their daughter's stare and automatically followed her line of sight.  
>"I met those two on the train. The man's name is Robert Mason, and his son's name is James. They're moving into the old art studio on White Avenue. Robert is quite a scholar, apparently, he wishes to continue his studies in Heartgrove, or so he told me while we were on the train."<br>_James..._ Thought Amelia. _What a peculiar boy. There's something... different... about him._  
>James glanced in the family's direction as Amelia's father bounded across the platform to speak again to Robert Mason. Out of surprise and shyness, Amelia once again dropped behind her mother and out of sight of that peculiar boy. The man looked rather timid compared to Amelia's former carpenter of a father, but Arthur Williams' bombastic personality would undoubtedly win him over, if it had not already.<br>There was much laughter, much reuniting, much celebrating. However, life cannot be perfect forever, Amelia knew that. However, the Victorian house at the corners of Terrance and Meadow Drives had never been happier than that very afternoon.  
>And so that is the story as to how our lovely Amelia first met the boy who would undoubtedly change her life forever. Dreams and suffering will be factors in their never ending story of roses, thorns, and a lost sense of paradise.<p> 


	2. School Kids

School Kids

17 year old Amelia Williams broke the hypnotic trance she had been in for those moments of nostalgia. The sun was nearly setting and the walls of her room danced with a pink glow that shone through the silken black curtains. She placed the letters back within the locked trunk and slipped along the corridor and down the stairs.

The piano sat in the middle of the ballroom. It was ebony black with keys of real ivory, her mother's favorite. Rather, it _had_ been her mother's favorite. It lay beneath a coat of sparkling dust that told the story of an era unloved.

Amelia was hesitant at first; she almost walked past the room entirely. She didn't. She paused and stood in the doorway. The color continued to dance on the walls of the ballroom opposite the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the hall. Amelia saw the pink; then she saw the gold and the light of a summer evening, years ago. She saw her cousin and her cousin's fiancée dancing in the hall. She saw the blue crepe dress and the heirloom tuxedo pants and dress shirt. She saw father reading in the corner. She saw her mother sitting next to a young Amelia at that very same piano. Her mother's hands were pale and delicate and they guided the child's own fingers along in a pattern among the keys. The laughter and the sound filled Amelia's ears. Her father placed down the book he was reading and the couple continued to spin along to the music they could only hear within their hearts. The mother and child played the same melody over and over. And then it was gone, just like everything else. It was perfectly silent.

The room was dark now. The piano, alone. Amelia lit a candle she had brought from her room. Approaching the piano, her hands shook as she reached for the keys. Her long, pale, cold finger reached for the music, for the laughter, for the family she had once known and loved. She drew back, but was overcome by what she had to remember, but she only knew one song.

She placed the candle on the table besides the piano and stared at the keys. They ivory had yellowed and the magic seemed to have departed. It was as if it were a cold corpse from which the life had been prematurely evicted. And so Amelia sat on the cold bench in the empty ballroom and stared at the skeleton keys.

And then she played.

The one song she knew how to play by heart had been taught to her by her loving mother, long ago. Amelia had never known the name of that song, and she assumed her mother had never known, as well.

Her fingers played one note, then another, then a chord. Finally, Amelia began to play the melody of her childhood. It was the melody of her soul. Long ago, she had made up the lyrics, and that is what made it her own.

In her head, she sang:

_When the angels of the valley, come singing of an end_

_ And when the vacant moon has fallen asleep_

_ The night wind will part, when your soul leaves body_

_ Heaven's for the pure of heart, my dear_

She stopped singing within herself and allowed the familiar melody to wash over her soul. She couldn't remember the rest, so she stopped. Then again, it doesn't really matter.

A soft rain pelted itself on the Queen Anne's roof. A drizzle had set itself forth from a thin covering of haze the previous evening. The morning light pierced through the clouds, but the rain continued to darken the sidewalks along the streets of Heartgrove. The large bedroom was perfectly quiet. Amelia lied awake.

Unable to take the silence any longer, she dressed and walked into town to find a place to eat breakfast. Down the streets she walked, in the drizzle and the dampness. She hung her head low, her chin almost touching the white silk of her dress. Her copper hair frizzled from the humidity. Not that it really mattered,

The café was busy that morning, no one really wished to be outside. A waitress in a flowery dress brought Amelia her cup of black coffee. Amelia stared out the window from her two-person table, half abandoned. The rain continued to drizzle.

The coffee steamed and Amelia couldn't help but sigh. _I can't believe I only have 50 dollars to my name… this is no was to survive._

She closed her eyes and almost smirked. _It's funny; it's been a long time since I have felt this at peace, ironically in the very town I wished to escape for so many years._

She lifted her mug to her lips and sipped the hot beverage. _Like a little gold from heaven._

She opened her eyes, and nearly fell out of her chair. The seat across from her was no longer vacant. There, a boy sat. Rather, he wasn't reasonably what most people would still quite call a boy, for he was about 19 years of age. He was tall and lean with straight, but messy, red hair. He had rectangular glasses in a thicker wire frame. He was smiling, quite amused, as he rested in chin in his hands, just looking at the girl.

_James._ It was like she couldn't speak, she could only repeat the name to herself. _James._

"Hey there, doll." He said cheerfully, still grinning. "Haven't seen you around these parts."

Amelia just sipped her coffee again and glared at him over the rim, of her mug.

"Oh, come on, Amelia, I don't think you could have become _that_ cold in a single year." James teased.

She just sipped her coffee.

He leaned in closer. "Well, why don't you tell me where you've been hanging out the past year? No one's heard from you at all, it's like you fell off the face of the Earth or something."

"I didn't expect you to be worried." Amelia replied, flatly, but with just a touch of sarcasm, still glaring at him over the rim of her mug.

He couldn't help himself, he gave out laugh. "Áh, Amelia." He shook his head. "We're still friends, aren't we?"

"Define 'friends'."

He laughed again. "Oh, please, Amelia, I just want to know what you've been doing with your life."

She placed the coffee cup on the table. The solemn girl stared into the sweltering abyss.

"Chasing ghosts."

James suddenly became serious and perhaps a touch more empathetic. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to pry into your family matters…"

"Don't worry about it. I mean, sure, I left to escape this place that holds so many memories of them, but that wasn't my initial reason…"

"What was, then?"

She looked out the window. "Do you remember that locket my mother always used to wear when we were kids… before she got sick?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Remember when she sold it? She tried to be so strong, but it was like a bit of her was always missing…"

"I do."

"I will never forget."

Images flashed before Amelia's mind. A crying woman, pale and weak. She sold the one thing that was valuable to her so she could afford to keep her child fed and have the funds for her medical treatments. Her eyes never really changed after that day, not until she died. The pale grey was of a stormy sea that's still raged in her mind, despite her frail condition. They were never truly silent until they were extinguished by the illness that plagued her body and soul, the infirmity she developed after grieving the death of her husband, as if the tragedy had not been enough to assuage fate's grip on the poor woman's destiny.

James looked into Amelia's eyes, almost into her soul. "She was a great woman, she loved you a lot."

"I know… "A pause. "I found that locket, you know. A man in a big city, somewhere out West, had bought it. I spent almost all the money I had to my name, between the year on my own and the locket itself… Damnit, James. Things aren't good."

He just looked at her, tired and sad. "Why don't we go for a walk, Amelia?" He pulled out his wallet and put a dollar on the table for the coffee.

"Please don't pay for me, James."

"We're friends, aren't we?"

The rain was still drizzling, but a walk with James was just the sort of thing Amelia needed right then. _It's not that I'm mad at him, personally… I still feel like I need to take things slowly with everyone. With everything._

The park bench was soaked through, but there they sat and talked about what was new. Robert Mason had moved across town and gave James the old studio, down the street from the train station. Old mayor Darth had died the previous spring. Several of the slums were having the pluming systems upgraded, or installed, in some cases.

"Amelia, you know what this town runs on, don't you?" James said suddenly, looking up into the grey, hazy sky.

"This town? This town runs on steam, right? Like the trains and the water systems and individual homes. I remember being a kid and my parents buying material in order to keep the household running, it was some sort of liquid if I remember correctly…"

"That liquid is called Andominium and is heavily regulated by the county government. It used to be in a high supply… but then all of the businesses started growing. This city has grown a lot since we were children."

"The industrial boom…"

"Right. Now the supply isn't so vast anymore." He looked at Amelia with dead set passion for what he was about to say. "Amelia, things are going to get worse."

"James… what do you mean?"

"Amelia, if we don't stop this, the companies are going to buy up all of the Andominium and the average folk like you and I are going to have to pay extravagant prices to fuel our homes. Also, think of what the price of transportation is going to rise to… -And the people living in the slums! Their living expenses are going to go through the roof! Amelia, people will be living on the streets! People will DIE in the streets!" He was becoming eccentric now, his arms flying in every which direction as he spoke with a fiery fervor.

"'if we don't strop this…'… what are you talking about? James, what have you been up to…?"

He suddenly became very quiet. He pulled out a pen and a piece of paper from his overcoat. He kept his eyes down as he wrote on the paper and handed it to Amelia.

"Meet me at this address. 8pm, tomorrow… I think you'll understand, Amelia, you always have…"

He walked away. He turned and left and walked down the sallow streets of Heartgrove in the direction of the train station and his converted-studio home, his wet red hair soaked through by the rain, his boot repelling the precipitation as it began to come down harder.

And then it poured. Amelia didn't ask for an explanation. She didn't shout after him. She didn't catch up with him. Some things just needed to be done. She knew that.

Next, she walked home, a lost girl soaked in a painfully wistful downpour wearing a white silk dress that was as awash as her memories.


	3. Town of Steam

Town of Steam

The central most "Hearth", or zone, of Heartgrove was officially known as "Hearth 0". This is where the slums and tenements of the township dwelt, the rotten core of a gilded city. The evening following her meeting with James, Amelia shrunk into the soul of the city's shadows. The note read "23 Meadow Avenue, floor B2, take employee entrance around back".

The great brick rectangle loomed over Hearth 0; it had few windows and an ominous presence that kept most of the middle class away from the entire sector. Amelia ran her hand along the chain link fence and found the break the signified the employee entrance gate, the only light on the street being the reflection of the moon.

The entire back lot of the building smelled like rotting garbage. Actually, the entire street reeked of rubbish and rot.

Amelia couldn't help but smirk in the near blackness. _Ha, "Meadow Avenue"… that's funny…_

She slid along the cool bricks and pulled her cloak sleeve over her nose to filter the vapors. The employee entrance was an old iron door, rusty on the hinges. She backed up and pushed hard against it, but it failed to budge. She tried again. No luck. Finally, Amelia took several great steps backwards and kicked the door as hard as she could, directly at the center. The door budged and was open with another hard thrust.

Amelia stood in the even blacker darkness of the worker staircase. It led only one way, down. The rickety iron steps were only illuminated by the radiance admitted from an oil lamp next to the door Amelia had just entered through. Next to the lamp there sat several unlit candles in cast-iron holders.

_Guess I'm in the right place._

Amelia bent, picked up a candle, and reached up to the lamp to light it. The stairs were rather steep and she was forced to walk down them in an awkward hobbling manner. For a moment, Amelia heard a loud brushing sound next to her which almost caused her to drop the candle she was clutching. It was just her dark blue dress, which, while hiding in the gloom, had brushed against the rail of the stairs and frightened her.

Two stories down she found a wooden door that opened with just a touch. The room just beyond was large and stone and lit by a single, large electrical bulb of little power. The space contained a few hefty timber crates of various sizes. A few of the largest were placed almost pretentiously against the far wall. Amelia blew out the candle and placed it down next to one of the large boxes in the back before taking a good look up and down the crates. They were covered in large, fibrous tarps.

_Now what? … This is the only room on this floor…_

Amelia felt along the crates and found a sudden dip in the tarp. With much hesitation, she lifted the tarp and took a look beneath.

There was a gap between the crates. Actually, at the end of the ten foot long gap was another door, this one made of much fresher iron than the earlier entrance.

Amelia approaches the door and pushed against it. It didn't move. Really, there was no handle on the door at all.

Suddenly, it swung open and a young woman nearly knocked Amelia over.

"Listen, all I'm saying is that they're fools if they can think that Hubble won't be at least a _bit_ suspicious." Her attention was suddenly diverted towards Amelia. "Oh, sheesh, did I just walk right into you? James was getting worried you wouldn't show. Come on in, but be quiet…" The woman herself, it must be address, was not at all quiet. Not in the least.

The room was better lit than the storage room, but not by any great degree. A large, oak table sat in the middle of the room and around that table sat seven individuals; the only one who Amelia knew was James. He waved her over and she took a seat to his left, next to a boy with polished silver hair.

"This is Amelia." James said. "I haven't exactly told her anything about our little 'club', yet."

The woman who had "greeted" Amelia leaned on her forearms on the table and replied, "Good thing you didn't, James… we don't need the entire damn city knowing our plans. Actually you're mighty lucky you could even bring your little 'friend' at all…"

This was the first opportunity Amelia had to observe the strange woman. She was perhaps twenty, with short cropped silver hair and dark red lipstick. She was wearing custom fit trousers and a baggy, black cotton shirt of some design Amelia had never seen in her life.

"Ferrous! I think you should be more polite to our guest…" The boy next to Amelia said with a genuine smile. "I'm Ferric, and she is Ferrous, my twin sister. We're… quite different." Amelia couldn't help but notice he was far most elegantly dressed and mannered than his sister. He leaned back in his chair and rested his elbow on the armrest, his chin settled quietly in the palm of his hand.

"So, you have a lot to learn, Amelia." This time it was a tall man with a broad chest and shoulders and a very stubbly face. His hair was made up of bristly, mud brown strands. "… that is, if you _want_ to join our… what did you call it, James? Oh, right, our 'club'." He seemed to want to get along with the meeting's business, but was not overly serious in and of himself.

"I'm very… interested in what you do here. The city truly has changed since I grew up here and I am willing to help make it a better place for people." Amelia replied, truly intrigued.  
>James added, "It's almost as if the heart of this very place has died… the art, the culture, the science. It has become an empty town of steam. The corporate monster. It's… it's not the place I fell in love with." He turned a bit towards Amelia, but quickly looked straight ahead and blushed at what he had said. He tried to appear busy by polishing his glasses with the edge of his shirt.<p>

The mud-haired man continued to speak. "My name is Byron and these here, in order of hierarchy after myself, are Clint, Ferric and Ferrous, Constance, Edwin, and of course you know James."

Ferrous interjected. "_Actually, _me and Ferric hold the same level in the hierarchy."

"Ferrous, shut it." It was Edwin who spoke this time. He seemed to be much more serious than the others. He was dressed completely in black and held a pallor complexion that showed how very little he visited the daylight.

A girl of about 16 who sat next to Edwin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Her cream colored ruffled dress was far more lavish and almost childlike than anything Amelia had worn within the past half-decade of her life. She looked down at her lap and hid her face.

"Constance, I'm becoming really uncomfortable with this situation, as well." Ferric finally said. He smiled and turned to Byron, "Can we all please just ignore my sister's outbursts?"

Byron sighed and rubbed his beard. "Fine, this is what we do here. We're a group of individuals who are in the business of transporting goods."

Edwin looked bored. "More like illegal trafficking…"

Byron ignored him. "There is a mining town called New Victory about a two day train ride from here… well, by cargo train, that is. I know you've heave of Andorminium, right?" He didn't give Amelia a chance to answer. "We buy the surplus that is there, which is quite cheap, and resell it here, in the city, to people who need it. Now, this operation doesn't exactly go by the books. Andorminium is highly regulated by the county counsel. It's actually illegal to buy it from outside of Heartgrove and the neighboring cities in this county."

"The big businesses take up all that Andorminium, though." Clint, second in command, said this. He had coarse blonde hair that fell over his ears and halfway down this neck. He was perhaps James's age. "Really, our biggest clients are the tenement landlords. They don't _want_ to jack up living expenses for anyone, really. The thing is, if they have to pay more to power the tenement, it costs more for people to live there, and then people can't afford it. People go homeless, Heartgrove goes to ruins." He shook his head. "Ruin-er."

"You'll learn more as time goes on, though, but that's pretty much the basics. We meet here three times a week for basic planning, outside of operations. You'll learn more about the operations when you become an official member." Byron turned to the group. "Well, Ferrous, you have that one business deal to seal this weekend and then we're set through Monday evening. See everyone, then."

Everyone except for James and Amelia stood to leave for home. Constance still hid her face, a enigma wrapped within herself. Right before parting, Ferric turned to Amelia and said "I really do hope you join us, I think it would be great to have you on the team."

"I have one question." Amelia started. "What exactly do you call yourselves?"

He looked pleased to have been given the honor to answer such a question. "Well, I'm glad you asked." He looked across the table and smiled. "We are The Darkness, and we have come to bring the light."


End file.
